The World of DreamCraft IRL

AhD

AhD

Third Place | Age 0-9 category | Fall into Fiction Contest 2025 | San José Public Library


Avery was sitting in her room one day, while playing DreamCraft on her PC. She was playing FashionFame. "Arrrghhhh! Why did I get last place! This server is rigged!" She pounded her fist on the table. Her soda toppled off the floor and splashed all over the carpet. "Great! Now my coke's gone too. How could this day get any worse!"  
Welp, it got worse.  
She reached to clean the mess. "I'll clean it later." She thought. So she got her bag of chips and started crunching. The crumbs spilled on the floor and created a portal! "Whaaa? How?" She went inside the portal anyway. She collapsed on the floor with a big thud. "Oww!" She rubbed her back. "Wait.. where am I?"  
She looked at herself again."Why am I my DreamCraft avatar?" 
She looked around. She was in a large lobby and there were tens of big doors. The doors had familiar names. Right in front of her was a door that said ‘FashionFame'. She went in and looked around. She was actually in the FashionFame world! There were racks of cool outfits and accessories in every color and design. She got up, and ran to try on clothes. It took a lot longer now that she was really doing it instead of just clicking on her tablet. When she was done, she did her make up. It was way harder. She went past the hair station. "My hair's pretty already." So she did her nails. That was kind of messy. She never did these things in real life! When the podium was revealed, she got last place."This time I deserve it." 
She wanted to go to another game now, so she went into the DarkForest game. While she was chopping trees for the fire, she got a splinter. "Ooww! I don't like this game anymore!" and she immediately left.  
"What kind of game won't hurt me? Oh I know!" So she teleported herself to ProjectGarden. While she was peacefully watering her plants, she thought - "I can live in this game forever." 
But she got bored of buying seeds, planting them, waiting for them to grow, picking the crops, and selling them. Over and over again. 
She also noticed that there were no real kids in this world, just avatars all playing the same games again and again. This was boring and repetitive.  
"All I want to do is just go home! I miss my family, cat, friends and school." 
So she had an idea. She went to a virtual world within the game called MainStreet. Then, she bought some soda and chips from the MainStreet grocery store. She went to her cute, preppy apartment in the virtual world, and poured the soda first. Then she ate the chips and added the crumbs from the bottom of the bag to the mess. And sure enough, another portal appeared. She sprinted in and landed with a big thud. But instead of saying "oww!", she said "yess!" She was happy to be home- her real home.   
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